(photo: Pope Leo XIV, Edgar Beltran, 2025)

Forgiveness offers both the forgiver and forgiven a relief from the painful and burdensome negative emotions that are experienced when forgiveness has not happened. Particularly when someone has experienced moral distress and moral injury in a hurtful event, we know that these events are commonly followed by:

• guilt
• shame
• feelings of betrayal
• anger
• feelings of powerlessness
• feelings of hopelessness
• feelings of loss of meaning
• struggle with faith
• struggle with forgiveness
• loss of trust

(see Moral Distress and Moral Injury in Forgiveness for more information)

These negative emotions can pose their own obstacle to even thinking about forgiveness. In his General Audience this week (October 8th) Pope Leo offered a perspective of hope for people who are downcast, weary, and suffering from hurtful events in their lives and the moral distress and moral injury they have experienced as a result of these events. I will share with you the key messages:

• There is an obstacle that often prevents us from recognizing Christ’s presence in our daily lives: the assumption that joy must be free from suffering.
• Understand that pain is not the denial of the promise of God’s love.
• This is the greatest surprise: to discover that beneath the ashes of disenchantment and weariness there is always a living ember, waiting only to be rekindled.
• No fall is definitive, no night is eternal, no wound is destined to remain open forever.
• However distant, lost or unworthy we may feel, there is no distance that can extinguish the unfailing power of God’s love.
• Sometimes we think that the Lord comes to visit us only in moments of contemplation or spiritual fervour, when we feel worthy, when our lives appear orderly and bright. Instead, the Risen One is close to us precisely in the darkest places: in our failures, in our frayed relationships, in the daily struggles that weigh on our shoulders, in the doubts that discourage us.
• The risen Lord walks alongside each of us, as we travel our paths – those of work and commitment, but also those of suffering and loneliness – and with infinite delicacy asks us to let him warm our hearts.
• The Lord waits patiently for the moment when our eyes will open to see his friendly face, capable of transforming disappointment into hopeful expectation, sadness into gratitude, resignation into hope.
• The Risen One desires only to manifest his presence, to become our companion on the road and to kindle in us the certainty that his life is stronger than any death.
• Let us then ask for the grace to recognize his humble and discreet presence, not to expect a life without trials, to discover that every pain, if inhabited by love, can become a place of communion.
• And so, like the disciples of Emmaus, we too return to our homes with hearts burning with joy. A simple joy that does not erase wounds, but illuminates them. A joy that comes from the certainty that the Lord is alive, walks with us, and gives us the possibility to start again at every moment.

Of course the big news this week is the publication of Pope Leo’s first Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te, however I think that his words in the General Audience are well worth thinking about, especially in relation to forgiveness. There is especially great value in his words:

However distant, lost or unworthy we may feel, there is no distance that can extinguish the unfailing power of God’s love.

Please share that with someone who needs to hear it.

This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of forgiveness, healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com — he will be glad to connect with you for a conversation. Please type in your email and click “Subscribe” below to stay connected and get Live and Forgive articles delivered to you.

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